


Passing Notes

by adowtrash



Category: A Discovery of Witches (TV), All Souls Trilogy - Deborah Harkness
Genre: Dream Sex, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Sexual Fantasy, Smut, a lil bit of angst, but you know, not that much
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2019-10-05 22:03:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17333171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adowtrash/pseuds/adowtrash
Summary: This won't make much sense if you haven't read Shadow of Night, but essentially spans from the moment Diana and Matthew arrive at Sept Tours until a little while later. This might be the first in a series, but if not I hope you enjoy some pointless angsty sexual frustration.





	1. Chapter 1

Wednesday was the first night he’d spent without Diana in a month -- just a month -- and yet her absence was already intolerable. 

He played chess with his father late into the night to avoid having to go back to his tower alone. He lost every game, already too distracted by the sound of her moving in her bed; every soft sigh or rustle magnified as he listened carefully for any sign of distress or pain. 

Or for the lack of sound altogether, as though she could be taken from him, here, again. 

They talked about everything but her, but he could feel Philippe watching him, knowing where his mind was. 

He didn’t sleep, and he couldn’t bear the sight of his bed without her, so he waited outside her room knowing that he’d never be allowed near the door itself. 

When she finally emerged the next morning, she looked tired and beautiful and the scent of her was more intoxicating than he remembered.

As he drew her to him, he thought dimly of the way Hamish had clucked with a soft “Oh Christ, Matthew”, knowing how completely lost he already was.

The feel of her, the smell of her calmed something that had begun boiling overnight. An uneasy feeling that immediately returned when he heard, then felt, his father’s presence on the landing – interrupting them, separating them again.

-

Thursday and Friday passed much the same way, with his father calling him off to join him on walks, on hunts, for chess, to discuss Congregation business. Anything to get him away from Diana. It wasn’t subtle, and Philippe didn’t intend for it to be. 

-

By Saturday, he was aching for her. Just to hold. To run his hands across her back, to feel her fingers brush along his legs. It was the small, involuntary touches he longed for. They were never around each other long enough to just _be_ – every moment felt stolen, every grasp intentional and purposeful.

-

On Sunday, he found himself aching for a little more. 

He found her in the depths of Marthe’s still room. His eyes lingered along the edge of her bodice – unfashionably low, with no ruff in the way. And he might have been imagining the way she bent over the table, arms folded while reading a passage in an alchemical text, the way she began pressing her breasts together while stray locks of hair came loose to rest along her shoulders.

But somehow she didn’t seem to notice him, distracted by whatever she was reading, and brushed a hand, lightly covered in soot, across her face – leaving a grey smudge on the bridge of her nose. He moved forward to help rub it away but instead found himself lifting her onto the table to kiss her deeply. She wrapped her legs around his hips, urging him forward until he felt heat between layers of fabric that made him pant slightly as he pulled away. 

“Matthiaos!” 

She laughed into his neck as he swore.

“Before you go,” she started.

“Mm?” 

He smoothed down the front of his doublet, distracted by Philippe’s sudden and deliberate cacophony upstairs. 

She curled a finger under his chin and brought his ear close to her mouth, still red and slightly swollen. “I’m not sure how much longer I can manage.”

He looked at her in confusion and she bit back another laugh as she fingered a button on his shirt to avoid meeting his gaze. 

“I've made myself sore without you.”

He set his jaw and looked firmly over her head, fighting a wave of lust so strong that the urge to take her right on the table was overwhelming – and would’ve been inevitable if his father hadn’t picked that exact moment to appear in the doorway.

-

By Monday, he knew he was certainly not imagining her looks, her smiles, or the way she would brush past him in a slow and lingering way as they passed in the halls. But, if there had been any lingering doubt, the note that found its way into his rooms that night put a stop to it.

He opened it, read the first line, and promptly smashed a side table he’d owned for a few hundred years.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little more.

On Tuesday, he did everything he could to avoid her.

Naturally, this meant he ran into her around every corner and at the bottom of every stairwell.

He barely looked at her, mumbling an excuse as he kept moving, because particular lines from her note kept drifting unbidden into his memory every time they passed.

_I miss the feeling of your mouth against my –_

Desperate for any distraction, he resigned himself to his bed in the hopes of getting some rest, and tried to ignore a fresh note waiting for him, reeking of honey and almost certainly filled with more obscenity.  

He opened it. He wished he hadn’t.

1500 years of stalwart Catholicism meant he now had to avoid his most pressing situation as he waited for sleep.

-

A soft knock at the door, hours later, roused him.

He blinked back his tiredness and propped himself up to see Diana slip into the room and press the door closed behind her.

Their eyes met, he felt his pulse jump, but he was frozen to the spot – sure that Philippe would know she’d left her room and appear at any moment, chuckling and dragging her back downstairs before she could get any further.

Instead, she crept closer, looking deliberately innocent, before crawling across the bed to straddle him, her long night rail riding high on her thighs and separating them by mere inches of thin fabric.

He meant to tell her to leave. He meant to gently push her away.

If they were going to do this, finally, after waiting for so long, he would want to take his time. To know that he’d have hours to discover everything she liked, everything she wanted, without fear of being interrupted.

But she was kissing his neck and his words were caught in his throat.

As she began grinding against him, he looked her determinedly in the eyes, grasped her thighs, wrenched up the last of her shift, and pulled her down onto him in a rough, swift motion.

She whimpered, he saw stars.

She clung at his shoulders, he pressed his face against her chest.

She couldn’t want him as much as he wanted her, but her arousal was clear and gratifying all the same.

They began to move together, and he shut his eyes, because all of it – her face, her scent, the feel of her – was too much.

“What do you want?” she breathed into his ear.

“Just this. Just you.”

“But I'm not here,” she whispered back.

-

He woke, alone in his bed, and smashed several more things he’d accumulated over the years – satisfied at the thought that Diana would be furious that he’d ruined so many priceless antiques.

Enough was enough. He was going to put a stop to this game.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Philippe takes Matthew for a walk. I regret to you inform you that this is smut-free.

Letter in hand, Matthew strode confidently from his room, ready to confront Diana, and collided headlong into Phillipe instead.

  
“I was thinking we could go for a walk this morning,” he said, barely registering the impact.

  
“I have something to do.”

  
“It can wait.”

  
It wasn’t a suggestion.

\--

The two had walked for a while along the walls in silence before Philippe broached his subject with an uncharacteristic delicateness.

  
“Whatever your other plans are here – with this book – if you don’t want the girl, it would be kinder to let her go and carry on with your business alone.”

  
Matthew’s head snapped up as though Philippe had shouted.

  
“You think I don’t want her?”

  
His father chuckled, not quite meeting Matthew’s eyes.

  
“Naturally, I don’t know what happens in the intervening years, but you and restraint have never been the closest of bedfellows. Which leads me to wonder…”

  
“It’s not that simple.”

  
In some ways, Philippe knew, it was the simplest thing in the world. The mating instinct was so strong, so instinctive, that holding back the way Matthew was trying to do was next to madness. Diana clearly desired him, but Matthew was experiencing a pulsing, constant need that meant his every waking thought was of her. And, from his son’s fevered appearance this morning, every sleeping thought as well.

  
If Matthew thought this was something he could outrun, he was wrong.

  
“Let me be clear about one thing,” Philippe continued, after a lengthy pause. “You can’t cheat this, and you can’t save her from you. She’s made her choice, now you must make yours.”

  
Matthew’s eyes scanned his father’s briefly and then returned to the ground.

  
Philippe also knew that this wasn’t just about sex. There was no biological imperative for vampires to sleep with their mates. It was about marking – the more separate Diana and Matthew became, the less she smelled like him, and the more she took on the scents of the household and its staff.

  
Every careless bump from a servant replaced more and more of Matthew’s scent with their own, something he could tell his son was finding impossible to bear.

  
“Thank you for your counsel,” Matthew replied with more than a hint of iciness. “Will that be all?”

  
Philippe gave a small sigh.

  
“For now.”


	4. Chapter 4

Now that he was banished from Diana’s bed, it was hard for Matthew not to think back on every opportunity he’d squandered. 

That first delicious flicker of possibility had run through him when he kissed her. When she sat, dazed, on the edge of her bed and he knew it would be easy to take just a little more time before leaving for France. 

As she slept, he’d kept his distance, standing guard by the window. Being good.

But his mind kept teasing him with the image of her waking, pulling him toward her, and wrapping her legs around him as he pressed her into the cheap mattress. The way it would bow under their combined weight, the way she’d wriggle beneath him, making him delirious with need. The way he’d revel in slowly removing her clothes before shedding his own. 

But no. He was so sure that Peter Knox could arrive at any moment. And there was no way he could keep his focus on anything but Diana if she was pressed against him for much longer. 

Later, too, when it felt like they had endless time to think and plan. When he’d seen her glow with pleasure, and he’d kissed her until even he nearly ran out of breath. The way her hand felt in his – perfect, delicate, warm. And he’d wondered if this was the right moment, despite their brief time together. Because he’d never known this kind of certainty, this kind of happiness. 

So, of course, Domenico had chosen that moment to throw the reality of their situation into cold relief: this was forbidden because of both what and who they were. Even though, for the first time in over a thousand years, Matthew felt nakedly and imperfectly human. 

But he wasn’t human. And he hadn’t stopped himself from consummating their relationship because of a handful of inconveniences. 

They’d had time in Madison. 

Nothing and nobody would’ve stopped him from ripping off her clothes and burying himself deep within her that night in the woods. He’d wanted to, more than he’d ever wanted anything. Because he’d never loved anyone like this in 1500 years. 

And here, at last, was the crux: how could she possibly feel the same?

What if he drank from her heart vein and found the kind of fleeting passion he’d known dozens of times? Even a genuine love that might disappear in a handful of years? He had watched countless relationships – once so full of desire and devotion — wilt, wither, and die. Mating felt like no guarantee when Diana’s kind had no equivalent. He would want her for the rest of his life, but she might grow tired of him in the short span of her own.

Without the heart vein, he couldn’t trust her. With it, he couldn’t trust himself.

So, Matthew was resolved: he would let Diana go as soon as they returned to their present.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be perfectly honest -- I have no idea what I'm doing with this one, and I hope it's still enjoyable to read.


End file.
